Frontiers in Psychology
October 16, 2025
Bruce Greyson, Jeffrey D. Long, Janice Miner Holden et al.
3 citations
A new scale, the veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDE Scale), was developed to assess how strong the evidence is for perceptions reported during near-death experiences. Thirteen experts used a Delphi method to agree on eight criteria, including timing of investigation, medical conditions, third-party verification, and the number and quality of perceptions, scored on a four-level Likert scale. The scale was then tested on 17 cases of potentially veridical NDEs by 11 human raters and three artificial raters using large language models. In 14 of the 17 cases (82.3%), human and artificial raters agreed at over 75% when considering two adjacent evidence levels, such as moderate plus strong or low plus very low. The scale offers a practical way to evaluate the evidential strength of reported NDE perceptions.
Journal of Near-Death Studies
January 1, 2021
R. Mays, Suzanne Mays
1 citation
A research group at the University of Liège evaluated and revised the widely used Near-Death Experience Scale, producing a new 20-item instrument called the Near-Death Experience Content (NDE-C) scale. The revision added items for negative emotions in distressing NDEs, the decision to return to life, and a tunnel experience, expanded Likert responses from a 0-2 to a broader range, and simplified wording. The development involved psychometric analysis of scores from 403 near-death experiencers, expert panel review, validation with 161 experiencers, and tests for discriminant validity against experiences from recreational drug use, meditation, and cognitive trance.
July 26, 2025
Bruce Greyson, Jeffrey Long, Janice Holden et al.
preprint
A new scale, the veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDE Scale), was developed to assess how strong the evidence is for perceptions reported during near-death experiences. Experts in near-death experiences reached consensus on eight criteria covering timing, medical conditions, third-party verification, and the type and quality of perceptions, scored on a four-level Likert scale. When 11 human raters and three artificial raters using large language models applied the scale to 17 cases, overall agreement between human and artificial judges exceeded 75% in 14 of the 17 cases (82.3%), considering adjacent levels of evidence strength. The scale offers a practical way to evaluate the evidential strength of such perceptions.